U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (3rd R) and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (3rd L) lead a rally to celebrate the start of the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) at the U.S. Capitol in Washington (Reuters / Jonathan Ernst)

Millions of Americans visited newly launched websites last week to learn more about the benefits offered through the president’s health insurance mandate, but Obamacare is apparently not ready for everyone.

Americans officially became able to sign up for insurance
coverage provided through President Barack Obama’s Affordable
Care Act program Tuesday morning, but a number of issues have
impacted the amount of people who are actually able to sign up
for so-called Obamacare.

Heavy traffic early in the week caused many of the websites to
reportedly crash, but complications are continuing to plague some
pages. A report conducted by CNBC suggests that as few as one
percent of those online applications were actually submitted
correctly.

“As few as 1 in 100 applications on the federal exchange
contains enough information to enroll the applicant in a
plan,” CNBC health care reporter Dan Mangan wrote Friday.

According to several insurance industry sources who spoke to CNBC
during the first week of Obamacare’s roll-out, a number of
complications are causing the vast majority of submitted
applications to be absent of the information necessary to
implement coverage.

But while user error would presumably be the main culprit, some
experts are saying the websites established to register Americans
for the president’s health care plan were brimming with internal
problems.

According to Nijhawan, whose company handles data processing for
insurers such as WellPoint and Cigna, there will be a “public
relations nightmare” if the Obama administration can’t
correct the issues that are complicating the sign-up process. If
a large number of people wrongly believe they have new insurance
when it officially goes into effect in January, he said, the
response could be damaging for the White House.

"One hundred people submit their application, one of them goes
all the way through the processing ... a big chunk of them are
being held," Infogix Chief Product Officer Bobby Koritala
added to CNBC. "They need to get more clarifying
information."

Dan Mendelson, the CEO of consulting firm Avalere Health, added
to Mangang’s report that he wasn’t surprised by the 1-in-100 rate
cited by Nijhawan.

Dan Schuyler, director of the consultancy Leavitt Partners, added
that "If we continue to see these issues through the next
three or four weeks there's a lot of concern about how many
people will have effective coverage by Jan. 1.”

According to the New York Times, around 8.6 million people
visited the new Obamacare websites last week. Before long,
however, the Department of Health and Human Services had to take
the website down during off-leak hours in order to provide
"significant improvements in the online consumer
experience."

"We have built a dynamic system and are prepared to make
adjustments as needed and improve the consumer experience,"
HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said in a statement.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Virginia), the second-highest ranking
Republican in the House of Representatives, said in a statement
of his own that "Americans have seen once again that Obamacare
is not ready for prime time.”

"We have been warned time and time again that ObamaCare is not
ready for prime time," independently added Rep. Tim Huelskamp
(R-Kansas). "Well, it turns out that is right."

Republican efforts to stall Obamacare largely led to the
government shutdown that started last Tuesday morning. GOP
members of the House opposed approving any budget that funds the
health insurance program, but Obamacare rolled out regardless
early Tuesday just as hundreds of thousands of federal workers
became furloughed over Congress’ failure to pass a spending bill.

According to the White House, healthcare.gov was visited by one
million unique visitors within hours of its launch last week.
Americans have until Dec. 15 to enroll in the president’s health
insurance plan.

"In the first week, first month, first three months, I would
suspect that there will be glitches," Pres. Obama told NPR
recently. "This is 50 states, a lot of people, signing up for
something. And there are gonna be problems."